Glass and Out Sports Scientist Job Fransen: Science of skill acquisition, competence vs confidence training and trusting your intuition
Dec 30, 2025
Job Fransen, Senior Lecturer and founder of SkillACQ, shares insights on skill acquisition in team sports. He explores the crucial differences between competence and confidence training, revealing why coaches should trust their intuition. Job emphasizes the importance of balancing both training types for optimal athlete engagement and performance. He discusses creative practice design, the role of coaches as facilitators, and the need for long-term learning versus short-term wins. Plus, he highlights innovative methods to assess learning and promote growth in athletes.
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Coaching: 50% Intuition, 50% Science
- Coaching is half intuition and half science and both are necessary to help teams learn effectively.
- Job Fransen says science can inform coaches but intuition and experience drive real-time decisions.
Be Deliberate: Match Intent To Drill
- Align practice design with stated intent and remove contradictions like loud music when developing communication.
- Reflect and ask whether an exercise truly replicates the game constraint you want to train.
Skill Science Is Biased Toward Closed Skills
- The evidence base for skill acquisition is weak and skewed toward closed skills like golf.
- Job Fransen warns many published studies overstate effects due to publication bias and limited applicability to team sports.